Yes, he’s helping his sister with her math. He’s trying, he really is and god love his sweet heart for that. But mere seconds after this photo was taken, little sister backhanded her doting brother in the face shouting, “I do it myself ‘Bastiannnnnnnnnnnn-nah!”

As for the nutritious breakfast? I haven’t been grocery shopping in awhile and had to mix two kinds of cereal together to make enough. And we were out of milk so I thinned yogurt with water and hoped it would pass for milk. They’d be too busy complaining about the bruised bits in the mashed banana to really notice the milk anyway.

After asking my daughter to get out from under the table, stop touching the dogs and to finish her breakfast about a dozen times, I put my face in my hands and admitted silently that mornings are not my favourite time of day.

I knew what I should do. I NEEDED to sit down at the table with the kids. Avery wanted my attention. Any good parent could see that. However, I am not always a good parent. Especially before 8AM. So I didn’t sit down with them. I had lunches to make and emails to check on my phone and school agendas to sign and snowpants to find (how does one lose their snowpants IN the house anyway?).

So today I set my alarm fifteen minutes earlier and lunches were made the night before. And so I was able to sit down with the kids and give them my full (mostly) attention. And guess what? The morning was smooth and perfect, serene even.

Ha! Kidding. Avery dumped oatmeal on her lap and I had to search for another pair of pants in a mountain of laundry. Then running to put her dish in the sink she knocked an ornament off the Christmas tree, sending shards of glass every which way across the ceramic tile. Do you think I could find the dustpan? It was lost too. Probably with the snowpants somewhere. And gloves? Where the frig did she put her gloves?! I finally found them drying in the laundry sink where I had left them. (Can’t exactly throw Avery under the bus for that one.)

Mornings aren’t always perfect. But the kids are happy to have me there. And if the biggest challenge is finding a misplaced pair of gloves or sweeping up a broken ornament — which was ugly anyway — then I guess I don’t have much to complain about.

You know what they say, “It’s no use crying over spilled thinned yogurt milk.”